Is the left really as totally dysfunctional as they appear to be here via Althouse lately. If they really are, and this blog is just reporting it, then why does anyone vote for a Democrat? Why did our host? It's not like the whole party suddenly bumped it's head - they've been like this for a long time. And by "left" I include the ones who happen to have jobs on TV.

bagoh20 - I come from a long line of Democratic voters. They are expert in denial and rationalization. They always find a way to deny the unpleasant truths, usually by some great rationalization that suspends all truth and evidence to the contrary.

As someone with a brain, LOD really pisses me off. As someone with MS, it makes me glad I'm not a violent person, anywhere near him. There's nothing funny about it, nothing to mock. Everything you ever did is potentially gone. Every plan for a long, rich, active life is in doubt. Fuck you Lawrence.

My oldest daughter has MS. For about 8 years now. It's one of the most frightening diseases you can imagine. You never know from one day to the next if you are even going to be able to get out of bed. You can never make long range plans without worrying that they'll fall through. You never know what part of your body will fail to function at your command. Anyone who can find that funny or find a way to criticize how a person deals with it should get instant karma.I've been amazed at Ann Romney's strength and resilience through the campaign. She is a class act. If a strong smart lady like Ann Romney chose Mitt, I certainly hove no problem with him.

My brother-in-law had MS for 20 years. He died three years ago at age 60 and was bedridden for more than ten years. I still have his "In Memoriam" funeral card above my desk so I can see it as I am typing this. As best as I know, there is no effective treatment yet for MS. So victims of MS and their families seek many different types of treatments including horse therapy and bee stings. It may sound crazy or odd or untruthful to a smug, hateful know-it-all like O'Donnell. But it is what people do when facing and fighting a dreadful disease. And I suspect the First Lady, Michele Obama may know this too since her father died from MS.

My guess is that, like every other important thing people deal with, MS is less important to a progressive than staying on the progressive plantation, and if that means making fun of anything except violent terrorists so be it.

My step-mother, who enjoys ill health (as my grandmother would say), told one of my father's friend's wife that having her (possibly mercury) filling removed might help her MS since it had brought herself from death's door.

I heard that did not go over well. I've often wondered if she deliberately drove away my father's friends.

Moreover, the notion of therapeutic horseback riding, while foreign to many at the time, was also not entirely new even back when, as a young reporter, I wrote an article about the concept (via a piece about Thorncroft) half a lifetime ago.

Disclosure: Unrelated to that article, I have known over the decades a number of people with various disabilities or at least disabling conditions who have benefited from therapeutic horseback riding. It's not an absurd thing, nor a political one. Hell, it ain't even a new age-y thing!

Larry O'Donnell suffers from ass-hattery. Unlike so many people I have known over the decades, his challenge has not to do with a "life/shit-happens" disability, but rather a character and lack-of-imagination flaw, self-chosen so far as I can tell.

Or maybe in place of lack of imagination it would be more on point to say "lack of independent thought, thus lack of impulse to do some research." For crying out loud--you know, instead of of endless cheapshottery.

Leftards are morons. Total and complete tools of their ideology and they are to dumb to know any different because after all, being a leftard is so so easy to do and requires absolutely no thought at all.

Jerks like this are sure that they're already compassionate, tolerant and saintly by definition, because they chose the correct liberal political affiliation. That problem solved, they feel no need to BE compassionate, tolerant or saintly and can indulge themselves instead in the ugliest hatefulness with no self-awareness whatsoever.

My aunt died of MS after spending most of her adult life as an invalid. It's a vile disease, it's not funny, and it's a mark of the current desperation of leftists that they're reduced to mocking Ann Romney for how she manages it.

I am going by memory and please correct me if I am wrong -- but aren't the horses in the equestrian events also awarded medals (or at least aren't their names used in the awards) in the Olympics? So Mr. Romney was being correct at describing the horse as an Olympic athlete and the "reporter" is not only stupid but factually incorrect at mocking that, too. Right?

I know so many people in so many different ways who have benefitted from therapeutic riding that this MSNBC (MNS be sad) nonsense is coming from another planet. And I have attended both PanAmerican and Olympic games in equestrian events -- magnificent and difficult. So if the horses aren't the athletes, I don't know who is.

Ditto the Andrea Mitchell tapes and mockery -- even saying the name Romney makes her look like she is smelling something bad -- and ugly.

Crack No one says you have to care, but it would be nice if you could look at it through any other prism than your irrational dislike of Mormons. How is your prism any less moronic than anyone else's?

There's nothing irrational about it. What IS irrational is you, defending the indefensible, as though there's some moral high ground to be found in it.

Television's concerns are not mine - it's an "idiot box" of manipulation for the weak minded. Jack Osbourne is not my friend, or acquaintance, and - as far as I know - not even a decent person. Ann Romney is a NewAge nut job, helping her husband push a cult lie on the country I love. Why should her personal struggles concern me in the least?

Oh yeah - because you say so, to be "nice." Fuck you.

Shanna,

Well, some people care because they know or have known people with MS and it's a terrible disease.

Then care all you want. Cry and wail, and get it all out of your system if you can. Just don't try to manipulate me into doing so by claiming some bullshit celebrities I (or you) have no connection to should matter - or make MS more important - because they don't.

Don't any of you think for yourselves, or is everything derived from a media narrative?

In contrast, in terms of you, Crack, I've begun to think about such things differently--that is to say, in a different way. I think you are all about narrative and media manipulation--an excessively narrow narrative and an especially malicious, opportunistic manipulation of media. However much that latter has been enabled does not excuse you of that former. Full stop.

Just walkin' the media mortar fire about the Romneys bein' elitist back on em, Crack.Ya know? Out Alinskin'em. Call em out on every stupid assertion. Don't give em' a minutes rest.Shit. Why is it anybodies busness who owns horses any why. The could be makin' dog food for all I care.